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If you enjoy decorating your home for the holidays, it’s important to choose new decorations and lights carefully and check the age of existing ones. Holiday lighting has the potential to start a fire, which is part of the reason why the number of home fires increases over the holiday season. The other issue is saving money. Your lighting and decorations can cost a lot considering how much electricity some of them consume. To keep your holiday lighting safe and energy-efficient, follow the steps in this guide.
Use LED Lights as Much as Possible
Holiday lighting can use a huge amount of energy and send your electricity bills soaring during the winter. The best way to ensure you can go full out with your holiday decorations and lighting without a massive spike in your utility bill is to use LED lights. LED bulbs and strings of LED holiday lights use only a fraction of the electricity that old incandescent bulbs and light strings do. Replacing all your old incandescent holiday lights with new LEDs is a great way to save money and avoid wasting energy.
Another issue with strings of incandescent holiday lights is that they produce quite a bit of heat. In some cases, they can get hot enough to cause dry evergreen needles to combust and your Christmas tree to catch fire. This is another reason why LEDs are a much better choice.
Inspect All Cords and Lights Before Plugging Them In
When you start decorating for the holidays and getting ready to put up all of your lights, fully inspect everything you plan on using: strings of lights and light-up decorations as well as extension cords and power strips.
The main thing you want to do is look for any bare wires and other obvious signs of damage. Bare wiring is a sign that the string or cord is unsafe to use since the wires could touch and start sparking.
In terms of power strips and surge protector strips, make sure that none of the receptacles are black or show any signs of smoking or scorching. If you see any of these issues, throw the affected strip in the trash, and use a different one. Melting, smoking or scorching indicates a damaged or loose wire within the strip that previously overheated or put out sparks. If you were to still use the strip in this situation, there’s an extremely high chance that it would result in a fire.
Find Out if Your Lights Are Rated for Indoor or Outdoor Use
The other thing you need to do before plugging in lights and decorations is check their tags to see if they are rated for indoor/outdoor use or indoor use only. The tag will usually have a label that says what type of use the lights are rated for. Another way to know is by looking to see what color the UL label or tag is. Outdoor lights should have a red UL label or a silver label with the letters UL printed in red. Indoor lights have a green label or a silver label with the letters UL printed in green. Using indoor lights or decorations outside is also a fire hazard and can result in shock or electrocution as well. Outdoor lights are designed to be waterproof and able to withstand the elements with no issues.
Don’t Overload Your Electrical Circuits
Overloaded electrical circuits can also be a fire hazard since they can result in wiring overheating and getting hot enough to melt or catch anything nearby on fire. Circuit breakers are designed to prevent this issue by tripping whenever an overload occurs. However, a circuit breaker can sometimes fail or get stuck and not trip when it should. That’s why you need to make sure you know how much power you can safely draw from a circuit without overloading it.
Generally speaking, it’s not safe to exceed 80% of the maximum wattage a circuit can supply. For a 15-circuit, never go above 1,440 watts. If you’re plugging lights into a 20-amp circuit, never exceed 1,920 watts. If you’re unsure how many amps any circuit has, all you need to do is see what the breaker for that circuit says. Once you know the amperage of a circuit, you can then easily calculate how many lights and decorations you can run off that circuit. Each of your lights and decorations should have a tag or label that tells you how many watts it uses. Add up the wattage of everything you want to run on a single circuit, factoring in overhead lights and your normal outdoor lighting as well as additions for the holidays.
Never Plug 2 Extension Cords Together
One fairly common mistake some people make is plugging two extension cords together instead of just buying an extension cord that’s the right length to reach wherever it needs to. Connecting or “daisy-chaining” extension cords together is always a bad idea since it can increase electrical resistance, which may cause the cords to overheat and catch nearby items on fire.
Don’t Connect Too Many Light Strings Together
You also want to make sure you don’t daisy-chain too many strings of holiday lights together since this can also result in the same issue as connecting two extension cords together. The total number of light strings you can safely daisy-chain together depends on the length of the strings, the type of bulbs (LED or incandescent) and the size of the bulbs. The general rule is that a daisy-chain string should never exceed 210 watts. You can run multiple daisy-chained strings on a single circuit, but you need to make sure that the total power draw of any string is under 210 watts.
A single string of 50 mini-LED lights typically uses around 2.5 watts, so you could daisy-chain over 80 of these strings together if needed. This is another reason why using LED lights is beneficial. If you use incandescent lights instead, you won’t be able to connect nearly as many strings and will need to use more outlets.
Turn Off Holiday Lights Before Leaving Home or Going to Sleep
Leaving your holiday lights and decorations off when you’re asleep or away from home obviously helps to keep your electricity costs down. Even more important, it keeps something from catching on fire when no one is around to immediately spot it burning and put it out or call the fire department.
Since 1978, Service Professor has been dedicated to providing top-notch electrical services and ensuring each of our customers is 100% satisfied. If you want to be fully certain that your holiday lighting is safe, we can perform a full inspection and take care of any repairs, installations or replacements. We’re also the company to turn to whenever you need heating, plumbing or air conditioning services in Grand Rapids, Grand Ledge, Kalamazoo or any of the surrounding areas.
To schedule a service call and get your needs promptly and professionally met, contact us at Service Professor today.
